Don’t expect a heart-warming teenage romance story within Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson. You will not read these stories, sip champagne and the relax into the absolution of serendipity. Fortune Smiles will do everything except absolve you of moral responsibility. In the way of plot, these stories have been written in a way to appeal to a wide audience. The collection has a bit of everything from futuristic drones, to draconic North Korean oppression, to abandoned babies in the fallout of Hurricane Katrina. The diversity of these stories reinforces Johnson’s purpose in portraying true morality as a malleable—often ambiguous—specter.
Moral obligation is the central tenant of Fortune Smile’s composite of six short stories. Time and time again, the protagonists face decisions that still make me wince weeks after reading them. Many of them, at first, seek their answer in the society surrounding them. They crave an outward force to tell them what is right and what is wrong. And, after being left without conclusion, these protagonists are forced to look within themselves and evaluate what they hold sacred as individuals. I believe this evaluation will happen to all of us at some point, and in retrospect we will constantly ask ourselves, ‘Was that the right thing to do?’
I almost pity Adam Johnson because his prose is so human, so evocative that I know that in some way, Johnson lived these stories and made each of these decisions himself. Fortune Smiles seeks to be the uncertain darkness that allows the light of morality to find definition and take shape. You will realize how fortunate your purchase was if you find a copy of Fortune Smiles on your bookshelf.
This collection is Adam Johnson’s fourth release, his third being the Pulitzer Winning Orphan Master’s Son.
– salvo.blair91@gmail.com
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